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Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#71

Post by Karunamon »

albertoleal wrote: post #70
Karunamon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a remarkably unfair characterization of people who have issues with Reddit.

That's pretty much the reality of it. The other group of users who have issues with Reddit (as we've seen yesterday) are the moderators; in particular the moderators of really large communities. Many others just seem to jump onto the bandwagon.

You don't have to think certain pseudo-religious thought patterns are bad in order to recognize that reddit has some serious problems.

The default communities are cesspools (consensus seems to be Reddit is better when they're unsubscribed)

The staff has no idea how to communicate with the userbase, a problem which has obviously gotten worse in the past few months.

The site hasn't seen a major upgrade in years and still regularly falls over under its own weight

The moderators of the defaults are all friends with each other and run each other's communities (++corruption)

Their current CEO has a questionable at best ethical history

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#72

Post by giggles_giggles »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #38
mingus68040 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see a commenting site with strong, pseudonymous identity support, to create a greater barrier to the racist and misogynistic trolls who infest the default sub-reddits currently. Some options: 1. Register with a phone number (do some basic checks to avoid Google Voice, Twilio, etc.) 2. Accounts cost $1, payable either through Payal or credit card. Accounts are tied to the payment credentials. 3. Partic…

I think MetaFilter tries to accomplish this goal, via #2 ($5 signup fee), right? I don't entirely follow points #1 and #3. Re #1: There are myriad ways to get a temporary phone number, beyond Google Voice, Twilio, etc. For example, I can just use an anonymous pay-as-you-go phone. What would this accomplish beyond creating some slight inconvenience? Re #3: I get the need for strong security. You could require multi-fa…

To answer your first question: MetaFilter does accomplish this goal with a $5 one-time fee (as you thought) required to comment or post in combination with heavy moderation, and it works quite well. The community is largely civil and discussions are often quite thoughtful.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#73

Post by wordbank »

danbolt wrote: post #32

I'm speaking as a bit of an armchair developer here, but I'd be very interested in seeing a more decentralized alternative to Reddit. A user of one Reddit-like site could post on another's through some sort of protocol, perhaps much like email. It would certainly be more complicated than something centralized, but considering Reddit's attitude towards user-generated communities and moderation, I could see it being a…

I believe decentralized Reddit can work quite well in this setup:

* Reddit-like engine that supports only one subreddit

* data importing tool that can fetch all the previous posts from Reddit sub and feed them to the engine

* mods of subreddits setup the engine on their own servers and migrate their subs' data there

* another useful addition - profile importing tool that can verify user, so you can preserve your username (via PM from bot on Reddit)

This way we're getting hundreds of small Reddit-like sites. If one fails for some reason - you can always fork it and try to attract audience to your version.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#74

Post by iolothebard »

beowulfey wrote: post #42

I really find it fascinating that people are scrambling to make Reddit replacements. First off, A) there's no guarantee the community will ever abandon Reddit, even if yours is better, and B) why are we mimicking what Reddit did, and succeeded greatly at? Of all places, I would think that Hacker News, a community of start-ups, would recognize that you don't often succeed by simply trying to improve on what some other…

I found reddit in the fall of 2005. It was everything I wished slashdot would have been.

Found Digg the same day, wasn't impressed.

I'll move on to the next site that supplants it. I have no loyalty to reddit and this Pao chick is a fucking joke.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#75

Post by luckydude »

15155 wrote: post #36
danbolt wrote: post #32

I'm speaking as a bit of an armchair developer here, but I'd be very interested in seeing a more decentralized alternative to Reddit. A user of one Reddit-like site could post on another's through some sort of protocol, perhaps much like email. It would certainly be more complicated than something centralized, but considering Reddit's attitude towards user-generated communities and moderation, I could see it being a…

It could be some kind of a network, perhaps, a network of users. We could call it, "Usenet." All jokes aside, what you're describing has existed for over 30 years.

Usenet is missing the upvote/downvote part. If it had that and a spam filter it would be mucho nicer than reddit in my opinion (which is skewed, I was on Usenet when there was no internet and I was quite fond of it before it got filled with spam).

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#76

Post by faizshah »

I have been working on one, it's not really ready for prime time yet.

The idea is that it's a news aggregator that learns what you like, so it forms a probabilistic model of what it thinks your interests are and applies that model to the network of submitted content to decide what you see. Instead of subreddits the system forms subcommunities by showing users with similar interests similar lists of content.

The main thing I'm having a lot of trouble with is figuring out how to do efficient keyword extraction on pictures and video. Otherwise it only supports links that have a lot of text. The other problem is it doesn't have enough of a community feel so that's something else I'm working on.

One of the ideas I am about to experiment with is removing user accounts and using browser fingerprints instead. I think if users dont have to sign up it will encourage users to more actively participate in the community.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#77

Post by illyism »

WorldWideWayne wrote: post #66
beowulfey wrote: post #42

I really find it fascinating that people are scrambling to make Reddit replacements. First off, A) there's no guarantee the community will ever abandon Reddit, even if yours is better, and B) why are we mimicking what Reddit did, and succeeded greatly at? Of all places, I would think that Hacker News, a community of start-ups, would recognize that you don't often succeed by simply trying to improve on what some other…

What's "the community"? There doesn't seem to be one community that is going to act in unison. Regarding point B, I am not sure that anyone said a replacement has to exactly copy reddit. Arguments aside, I agree with your final sentiment. Something new would be awesome. I'd like an anonymous Usenet/distributed-server style system that runs on port 80 - like a BitTorrent for discussions where anybody that can put up a…

Something like Aether? http://getaether.net/

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#78

Post by bazillion »

If you're working on a reddit replacement, I have an answer to the question of how to monetize your site. See this video featuring Victoria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhpB6QDOxCI&feature=youtu.be

The way it would work is that you'd install our plugin onto your site and make all of the images hoverable and linkable. Then, when people purchase through those links, you make an affiliate commission. The way we'd envision it working is that users would get a percent of the commission of whatever purchases they drove, and your site would also get a percent of the commission.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#79

Post by cphoover »

bazillion wrote: post #78

If you're working on a reddit replacement, I have an answer to the question of how to monetize your site. See this video featuring Victoria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhpB6QDOxCI&feature=youtu.be The way it would work is that you'd install our plugin onto your site and make all of the images hoverable and linkable. Then, when people purchase through those links, you make an affiliate commission. The way we'd en…

Why do it as a plugin?? Why not just straight JS embedded in the site. Then you don't have to ask users to download it.

Re: Ask HN: Are you working on a Reddit replacement? What is it?

#80

Post by bazillion »

cphoover wrote: post #79
bazillion wrote: post #78

If you're working on a reddit replacement, I have an answer to the question of how to monetize your site. See this video featuring Victoria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhpB6QDOxCI&feature=youtu.be The way it would work is that you'd install our plugin onto your site and make all of the images hoverable and linkable. Then, when people purchase through those links, you make an affiliate commission. The way we'd en…

Why do it as a plugin?? Why not just straight JS embedded in the site. Then you don't have to ask users to download it.

As a plugin, it works on sites that don't have it installed natively (Facebook, Pinterest, etc.). PLEENQ is both -- we offer a plugin that lets regular users use it on any site, as well as an embeddable version for website owners who want to monetize their image content.
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